Texasville is the sort of picture I'm glad I waited to see until I was sort of older as a person (do I say I am middle aged, oh hell I have more gray hairs, of what is left, to show for it, but I digress kind of); for the time when the longer director's cut - in black and white - got finally released to video in full restoration, which thankfully has happened from Criterion, but also because this is a film that speaks to the disillusionment that years of life, of relationships, responsibilities to others, that comes with middle age. It's a very funny picture in a lot of ways - there's even a semi-climactic egg fight at that much ballyhooed Centennial celebration - yet the melancholy of McMurty's writing and from the prior film is still there and not exactly subtle to find.
And sure, McMurty and Bogdanovich and company touched on in Last Picture Show this idea of not knowing where life is going and that rut becoming intractable, via the supporting characters (Leachman, who returns and is wiser if not still sympathetic to Timony Bottoms' Sonny, and Eileen Brennan who has a lesser role but still is striking). Maybe Bogdanovich had to grow a little more as well with life and experience to come to this point, but at the same time it doesn't mean Texasville has to be solely dependent on the previous film to work. On the contrary, like the Two Jakes released the same year (to a lesser extent that one uh Mob movie too, I forget the name), this works as its own story and the filmmakers create a dynamic that fits the particular world and changing of the times.
Another key difference is that Bridges' Duane is the lead here, not an ensemble despite the many cast in town (it is easy too, perhaps somewhat by design, to lose track of how many kids Duane even has, or who has grand kids on the way, or who Duane's kids are sleeping with and knocking up related to friends or his, but yeah, again this is partly a comedy), so it is about what he's going through most of all. At the same time, and for all the formidable strengths in Bridges skills as a performer that he brings to an older, sort of sadder, not much wiser Duane in this film, it's the women who make up the heart and guts and unconventional soul of the production. For as long as the director's cut is, you want to see what Jacy is going to say next to Duane because, little by little in degrees, her attitude towards Duane thaws and this love between them (one can call it that) is there... and then there's Karla, who nearly steals the film away from the both of them!
I can't stress enough how brilliant Potts is in Texasville, and mostly because of how, with some exceptions when the scene has to call for it like the kids acting up and getting into fights, her Karla is... cool, and collected, and this all may be a cover for her own deep seated pain and resentment at Duane. There is one scene in particular where she is just lying back on the bed or a couch or what have you in their bedroom as Duane is exasperated about a number of things and popping off, and she has the same level tone with him and is just perfect (it doesnt hurt that Bogdanovich and von Sternberg's camera adores her and she looks really beautiful here).
Indeed, the main pleasure and complexity of the film, which takes the kind of unwieldy sexuality of the first movie into another dimension, is how Jacy becomes closer to Karla upon her return to this town than she does even to Duane - and as one suggests to Duane, Jacy and Karla may be together on a more intimate level. Will Jacy take Duane's family, Karla included, off to Europe? Can you blame them if they did? Is it a love triangle? Hey, maybe they should all get some breakfast and everything will be fine.
This film as it is in its full cut glory may be too long, but at the same time the length is part of why it also works because Bogdanovich knows as well as anyone that you need time to let these relationships breathe, and for the many mistakes and follies and fights (the one between Duane and his son the most memorable, mostly for how it ends and both father and son are immediately sorry), and there's this gradual but very real sense that some of these people, chiefly Duane and Sonny but also Randy Quaid's Lester (so pathetic you can't remember him as the plucky youth from LPS), know that whether they've made their problems or life has to them, they don't know what to do about it next. And considering this is a world where the progtagonist is 12 million in debt over oil with a house and pool and maid, and to have sympathy for him, that takes something special to pull off on the director's part.
Texasville is a worthy and involving and entertaining sequel, and if not as groundbreaking as its predecessor it makes for an entertaining, humorous but melancholic (maybe on occasion wistful) drama with great dialog for these performers - and, it should go without saying, one shouldn't watch the theatrical cut again simply because it's in Color and it's mindboggling to think a studio would allow it to be done that way (then again I'm naive in my own older years). Indeed, considering the absence of Polly Platt (the production designer/at the time wife of Bogdanovich on LPS and supposedly a big influence on the script level) and Ellen Burstyn, this turned out to be a major success.
And sure, McMurty and Bogdanovich and company touched on in Last Picture Show this idea of not knowing where life is going and that rut becoming intractable, via the supporting characters (Leachman, who returns and is wiser if not still sympathetic to Timony Bottoms' Sonny, and Eileen Brennan who has a lesser role but still is striking). Maybe Bogdanovich had to grow a little more as well with life and experience to come to this point, but at the same time it doesn't mean Texasville has to be solely dependent on the previous film to work. On the contrary, like the Two Jakes released the same year (to a lesser extent that one uh Mob movie too, I forget the name), this works as its own story and the filmmakers create a dynamic that fits the particular world and changing of the times.
Another key difference is that Bridges' Duane is the lead here, not an ensemble despite the many cast in town (it is easy too, perhaps somewhat by design, to lose track of how many kids Duane even has, or who has grand kids on the way, or who Duane's kids are sleeping with and knocking up related to friends or his, but yeah, again this is partly a comedy), so it is about what he's going through most of all. At the same time, and for all the formidable strengths in Bridges skills as a performer that he brings to an older, sort of sadder, not much wiser Duane in this film, it's the women who make up the heart and guts and unconventional soul of the production. For as long as the director's cut is, you want to see what Jacy is going to say next to Duane because, little by little in degrees, her attitude towards Duane thaws and this love between them (one can call it that) is there... and then there's Karla, who nearly steals the film away from the both of them!
I can't stress enough how brilliant Potts is in Texasville, and mostly because of how, with some exceptions when the scene has to call for it like the kids acting up and getting into fights, her Karla is... cool, and collected, and this all may be a cover for her own deep seated pain and resentment at Duane. There is one scene in particular where she is just lying back on the bed or a couch or what have you in their bedroom as Duane is exasperated about a number of things and popping off, and she has the same level tone with him and is just perfect (it doesnt hurt that Bogdanovich and von Sternberg's camera adores her and she looks really beautiful here).
Indeed, the main pleasure and complexity of the film, which takes the kind of unwieldy sexuality of the first movie into another dimension, is how Jacy becomes closer to Karla upon her return to this town than she does even to Duane - and as one suggests to Duane, Jacy and Karla may be together on a more intimate level. Will Jacy take Duane's family, Karla included, off to Europe? Can you blame them if they did? Is it a love triangle? Hey, maybe they should all get some breakfast and everything will be fine.
This film as it is in its full cut glory may be too long, but at the same time the length is part of why it also works because Bogdanovich knows as well as anyone that you need time to let these relationships breathe, and for the many mistakes and follies and fights (the one between Duane and his son the most memorable, mostly for how it ends and both father and son are immediately sorry), and there's this gradual but very real sense that some of these people, chiefly Duane and Sonny but also Randy Quaid's Lester (so pathetic you can't remember him as the plucky youth from LPS), know that whether they've made their problems or life has to them, they don't know what to do about it next. And considering this is a world where the progtagonist is 12 million in debt over oil with a house and pool and maid, and to have sympathy for him, that takes something special to pull off on the director's part.
Texasville is a worthy and involving and entertaining sequel, and if not as groundbreaking as its predecessor it makes for an entertaining, humorous but melancholic (maybe on occasion wistful) drama with great dialog for these performers - and, it should go without saying, one shouldn't watch the theatrical cut again simply because it's in Color and it's mindboggling to think a studio would allow it to be done that way (then again I'm naive in my own older years). Indeed, considering the absence of Polly Platt (the production designer/at the time wife of Bogdanovich on LPS and supposedly a big influence on the script level) and Ellen Burstyn, this turned out to be a major success.